Tough
Morality is the stick favored for beating the Jews. And that seems only
fair. They claim for themselves such high morality, whereas for others, such
immorality towards them in the past-- but how about their own behavior now?
The Germans say that now the Jews are no better than they were then. For
example, a German of the war generation, remarking on how surprised he had
been to hear how badly the Jews had been treated in the camps, went on to
say, look, now they bomb the Palestinians and kill their children. They
learned nothing from the camps. Perhaps they should go again next
summer.
History forces a German to argue from the low moral position: they are
no better than we poor sinners. Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor
of The New Republic, is a Jew who assumes the high position. I was sent a
copy of his article entitled Tough
in which he favorably contrasts his own moral toughness to the toughness
of right wing Jews (those right-wing heresiologists who scream "moral
equivalence" at the sight of an inconvenient similarity between, say,
the death of Palestinian children due to Israeli army actions and Jewish
children due to Einsatzgruppen actions). He understands ... that this
makes me no longer trustworthy among the "warriors" in town (i.e. Washington).
But he is tough and will disdainfully tough out their disdain. Thus: I
am feeling tough, and toughly I feel also that too many children are being
killed by the right side in this war, by my side, by Americans and by Israelis,
in whose actions I am differently and willingly implicated. Thus damn
the consequences, it must be stopped. No more killing of innocents. Who but
a ogre could disagree?
Morality cows us. Moralists like to proclaim their conclusions as being
evident: what is it about Thou Shalt Not Kill that you do not understand?If
you dare falter, if you cannot immediately see the validity of the argument,
you are morally obtuse. Arguments of this type are moralistic as opposed
to being merely moral. They aggress. The only defense against them--against
being bulldozed by moralistic bullies--is tough analysis..
Similar to the distinction between moral and moralistic is that between
rational and rationalistic. As I have discussed elsewhere [The Death of Yassin
and the Limits of Rationality], the rationalistic argument misleads by a rhetorical
focus the use of logic. It thereby suggests that its conclusions have the
degree of certainty we attribute to science. In human affairs, such a suggestion
is always false. It is rationality oversold by its purveyors and often overrated
by its consumers.
Perfect logic does not guarantee certainty, for there is also the matter
of ones assumptions (premises, postulates, and so on). And in human affairs,
these are innumerable, commonly hidden and always uncertain. Rationalists
and moralists both focus our attention on only the few assumptions they
need to reach their sought for conclusions. Rationalistic rhetoric emphasizes
the reasonability of favored assumptions (we all seek to maximize our happiness,
seeing is believing,...); the moralistic, emphasizes the obvious truth and
overwhelming force of dicta.
The two differ in the rhetorical use of their assumptions. The rationalistic
rhetorician glories in his mind--in his fine logic; the moralistic one glories
in his large heart. The demands of the great moral heart brush aside all petty
questions. Logic is important when applicable, but can be dispensed with,
if necessary. Mr. Wieseltier does this with the sophistication one would
expect of a literary editor. He states:
It is past time to apply a little mental pressure to the doctrine
about "moral equivalence." Intelligent reflection about policy and history
proceeds by analogies. These analogies are always made with respect to an
attribute of an object or an event, never to the entirety of it. Otherwise
things could be validly compared only to themselves, and we would learn nothing.
Some analogies will be right and some will be wrong, but none will be perfect.
The wrong ones must be criticized, but generally not as a form of blasphemy
or treason. Most of the right-wing heresiologists who scream "moral equivalence"
at the sight of an inconvenient similarity intend mainly to shore up their
own thinking or to shut down the thinking of others. (They had no compunction
about comparing Saddam to Stalin.) And what is compassion, if not an exercise
in moral equivalence? The care that we feel for people other than ourselves
is the result of regarding us all, the subjects of our concern and ourselves,
under a single and highly general description, which is the description
of the human. There is no way to pursue justice without believing in the
moral equivalence of all men and women.
His basic premise is indisputable: to learn from historical analogy,
we must ignore the inevitable dissimilarities between events being compared,
since no two of them have the same attributes. From this he infers, in effect,
that to have compassion is to assert moral equivalence. Therefore, to have
compassion with the dead Palestinians, especially the children, is to proudly
assert moral equivalence. Only the non-compassionate right-wing heresiologists
scream blasphemy and treason. The implied conclusion is that the IDF killing
of children and the Einsatzgruppen killing of Jewish children are morally
equivalent.
Yes, think it through, his rationale leads to this implication. The heart
of Leon Wieseltier's argument is that the killing of children is the killing
of children is the overwhelming moral point before which all contingencies
pale. A morally sensitive person does not let them enter into the argument.
Such a person--a universal rather than a tribal soul-- is repelled by the
'screams' of the still grief-stricken Jewish people remembering the cruel
and purposeful killing of millions of their children. Millions versus hundred,
books versus bombs on their backpacks, bullets applied to the base of the
head versus strays hitting children encouraged to run interference for terrorists,...,
all such considerations are beneath the universal moralist.
It is not worth pointing out examples of sloppy logic and use of words,
for his rational verbiage is merely a facade for his emotions. Why does he
lead to the same conclusion that the Germans all favor: that the Israelis
are now the Nazis. Why is he repelled by the screams of his fellow Jews.
It is, I think, because he cannot bear it; he cannot bear the remembering.
He is not tough enough.